Jenny Bhatt

Jenny Bhatt is a writer, literary translator, and literary critic. Her short story collection and literary translation books are due out in 2020. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in various venues in the US, UK, and India, including NPR, The Atlantic, BBC Culture, Literary Hub, Longreads, The Millions, and others. Her fiction has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes and the 2017 Best American Short Stories. She was a finalist for the 2017 Best of the Net Anthology. Having lived and worked her way around India, England, Germany, Scotland, and various parts of the US, she now lives in a suburb of Dallas, Texas. Find her at: https://jennybhattwriter.com.
Short Stories: Solitude and Loneliness

Short Stories: Solitude and Loneliness

Five short stories—by Anton Chekhov, Katherine Mansfield, Bharati Mukherjee, Anthony Doerr, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie—explore various isolation, solitude, and loneliness pathologies from the perspectives of different lives and cultures.

‘Night Theater’: Surgery, Corruption, and Chekhov

‘Night Theater’: Surgery, Corruption, and Chekhov

The well-timed choreography of Vikram Paralkar's Night Theater leads us to interrogate the unfamiliar notes of our personal harmonies.

Short Stories: Beginnings and Endings

Short Stories: Beginnings and Endings

These five short stories are about new beginnings and unsettling endings that aren’t really endings.

Short Stories: Siblings

Short Stories: Siblings

Whatever the plot lines of a work of fiction, if it features siblings as important characters, various rich themes are mined. This issue of Short Stories brings forth the sibling-inspired works of Martha Bátiz, K Anis Ahmed, Jenny Zhang, Lidudumalingani, and Kseniya Melnik.

Short Stories: Tales of Love in Later Life

Short Stories: Tales of Love in Later Life

In the works of Elizabeth Taylor, Toni Cade Bambara, Lucia Berlin, Amy Bloom, and Yiyun Li, we meet older women protagonists who find potential later-life loves in all kinds of interesting ways.

Short Stories: Journeys

Short Stories: Journeys

The protagonists in these short stories by Asako Serizawa, Nanjil Nadan, Goli Taraghi, Stephen King, and John Cheever are unsettled, vulnerable, and unmoored during their journeys.

Speculation and Responsibility in ‘A People’s Future of the United States’

Speculation and Responsibility in ‘A People’s Future of the United States’

Speculative futures should go beyond merely reflecting the fears peddled by news and social media. Anthology A People's Future of the United States at times pushes those boundaries.

Short Stories: Animals, Part II

Short Stories: Animals, Part II

The selected stories this month have a touch or more of surrealism and their writers — Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Sarah Hall, Robert Olen Butler, Beth Goder, and Jackie Kay — explore the humanity of our species and our relationships with other living species.

‘All the Lives We Ever Lived’ Finds Comfort in Mourning with Virginia Woolf

‘All the Lives We Ever Lived’ Finds Comfort in Mourning with Virginia Woolf

These days, when personal grief becomes a public performance on social media, it's heartening to have a book such as Katharine Smyth's All the Lives We Ever Lived, wherein deep introspection is given space and literature provides both solace and inspiration.

Short Stories: Animals, Part I

Short Stories: Animals, Part I

Animals of all kinds have featured in fiction for as long as we have produced fiction. Here are five engaging stories about cats, dogs, herons, and cows by Sarah Orne Jewett, P. G. Wodehouse, R. L. Maizes, Parashar Kulkarni, and R. O. Kwon.

Bringing Forth the Male Gaze in ‘Preeto & Other Stories’

Bringing Forth the Male Gaze in ‘Preeto & Other Stories’

The male writers in the anthology, Preeto & Other Stories, have been selected because each wrote extensively, if sometimes idealistically and sentimentally, about women.

Short Stories: Women in the Workplace

Short Stories: Women in the Workplace

Lucia Berlin, Na'am al-Baz, Mia Alvar, Hananah Zaheer, and Laura van den Berg share the seldom-told stories of women's lives in the blue- and white-collar worlds.